


Hagiography

by NeverNoahh



Category: Homestuck
Genre: I'm really sorry, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-01
Updated: 2012-11-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:39:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverNoahh/pseuds/NeverNoahh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite now being a god; or a saint or...whatever;</p>
<p>you never learned how to perform miracles quite right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hagiography

**Author's Note:**

> ha·gi·og·ra·phy \ noun \\-gē-ˈä-grə-fē, -jē-\  
> 1 : biography of saints or venerated persons  
> 2 : idealizing or idolizing biography

You draw the curtains when the subway lines start running, horrible hollow sound of crowds in the mid morning. Pressing handprints against your sheets, forehead against the flat of a pillow, you speak without the break of commas into the spaces of your mattress. The dull sound of your bones beat; bestially, louder and loudest only when he comes back to mind. Your knuckles go white because his speech billows in the key of home. You clamp your mouth closed and, in the wool nest of your thoughts, he laughs and tells you to Breathe. When you draw your first shaky breath of the minute, bird sonata spills in through the cracks of your window. The notes wrap around you like piano strings, and you find solitude in the soft underside of sleep. You catch fistfuls of the dark before it can wrap you tight enough, and eternity catches you, runs you through.  
  
Your name is John Egbert.  
  
You only see him when you think to dream.  
  
  
  
The Game had picked you up, swung you by your ankles and let go, landing you skullfirst in a solid stone wall of crushing PTSD. _Post traumatic stress disorder_ , Rose would chide over an afternoon cup of tea, is nothing to laugh about. _Dave_ laughed about it. Dave ended up on his bathroom floor, Jade knelt over him with one hand trying to find a pulse and the other dialing a 9  
  
and trying to focus  
  
and two 1s later she could tell them that her roommate was in trouble, help, I can’t hear him  
  
Breathe.  
  
The funeral was open casket, open faced, open heart surgery as Jade and Rose clutched each other’s hands, and it was so, so, so quiet. There should have been music everywhere, but you were afraid to mention what he would have wanted for fear you may just wail, just howl like you heard Jade that night next to the ambulance demanding where they were taking him and why the streetlamps were so much darker than yesterday.  
  
  
Your name is John Egbert.  
  
You begged him to visit you that night.  
  
  
  
Rose passed so quietly, and you had more than enough time to congratulate her in the form of a goodbye and you never did. She smiled in her sleep while the sickness crushed the voice out of her ribs and sucked it up through the blades of the ceiling fan. A daily diet of bleach does that, a spoonful in every cup of tea, and you and Jade smiled stiffly through every sip. Rose said she wanted to rest but you can’t believe that you’ll never hear the pause in her speech when she can just  
  
Breathe.  
  
The discrepancy she left behind, a doctored truth that carefully lay flowers all along her grave in increments, stared you down as Jade straightened them all and sat back on her haunches. The note of desolation that is brought, haltingly, from the space at the back of her throat is made of cardgames and nooses and jokes you don’t know the punchline to anymore. This story is didactic, Rose would smile from over the rim of her teacup, eyes and mouth laced with taint she so willingly drugged and drank. You didn’t see the point, and you won’t; not until you get to the punchline.  
  
  
Your name is John Egbert.  
  
You are getting tired of repeating yourself.  
  
  
  
Jade didn’t see the truck.  
  
  
 **Breathe.**  
  
  
  
  
...  
  
Your name is John Egbert.  
  
…Where did he go?  
  
You have no hold over your aspect, not anymore. You do nothing but sleep now, curled hands into fists and toes shoved between ghost christened sheets. Pawing into the nothingness in search of bubbles, exhausted and needing to see them all one more time, you stumble through your dreams without pause. He haunts your echo, there, bird sonata molting from your figure, shedding hundreds of bars of melody when you try and  
  
Breathe.  
  
  
You were crazy long before this, but you can’t find space in your head to care. You crush your glasses under foot because you can’t tell if this is still a feverdream or if you can expect to wake up. Stampedes and flocks and murders of wings flush out your thoughts, and only one returns in time to remind you to wake up. Your lucid mind reels. His hands find yours, and--  
  
  
and you wonder if Dave held Terezi’s hand  
if Rose saw Kanaya around every cup;  
if Jade chased Davesprite back into the clouds.  
  
You hold his hands tighter, because he’s leading you out of the repeat loop, out of the same sad song sung over and over in the rhythm of your feet. You trip through the staccato, his breath guiding you through the key changes until you can see them too, they’re all there, you knew you needed to find him like this  
knew you could find them  
all.  
  


  
  


Karkat kisses the space over your heart and welcomes you home.

 

 

Your name is John Egbert.

 

And they never find your body.


End file.
